Ask yourself, would Lucknow Super Giants (LSG) give someone Rs 21 crore if he wasn’t expected to lead the side? Nicholas Pooran was Lucknow’s top retention for the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2025 season. They picked him over their captain, KL Rahul. Why? Maybe, perhaps because he was expected to lead the team.
Nicholas Pooran was ready to replace KL Rahul
Of the ten teams, only five were certain about their captains. These were the Mumbai Indians, Sunrisers Hyderabad, Chennai Super Kings (CSK), Rajasthan Royals, and Gujarat Titans. Yet none of them paid their captains more than what LSG gave Pooran. This basically shows that he was earmarked as captain. It wasn’t shocking either.
In the previous IPL season, Pooran led LSG against Punjab Kings, where Rahul was playing as an impact substitute due to an injury, and won. Everyone knew LSG owner Sanjiv Goenka’s and captain Rahul’s relationship wasn’t great, and when it was announced that Rahul was being released, you assumed that Pooran might be next in line.
Nicholas Pooran’s captaincy record in franchise cricket
| Team | Span | Matches | Won | Lost | Win % |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lucknow Super Giants | 2024 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 100.00 |
| MI New York | 2023 | 3 | 3 | 0 | 100.00 |
| Guyana Amazon Warriors | 2021 | 11 | 5 | 5 | 45.45 |
| Total | 2021-24 | 15 | 9 | 5 | 60.00 |
How Rishabh Pant’s entry changed things
And he was—until they bought Rishabh Pant for a whopping Rs 27 crore. This makes Pooran’s captaincy situation extremely doubtful. Had it been some other Indian star, he might still have led. But we are talking about India’s potential Test captain after Rohit Sharma. Pant’s a big deal in Indian cricket.
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How the MS Dhoni incident affects it all
Normally, you would think it’ll be shocking if Pant’s not named the LSG captain. But you mustn’t forget he’s in Sanjiv Goenka’s team. The man who sacked not just India’s but perhaps the world’s greatest limited-overs captain, MS Dhoni. For the unaware, when CSK was banned from the IPL from 2016-2017, Dhoni played for the Rising Pune Supergiant (RPS).
RPS got Dhoni at the 2016 auction for Rs 12.50 crore, and naturally he was named captain. But, after an underwhelming season (5 wins from 14 matches), Dhoni was sacked as captain for the 2017 season, and Steve Smith was announced as the new skipper. The move turned out well, and RPS made the final, but no one in their right mind would claim that Smith is or was at any time a better captain than Dhoni.
Confusion over LSG captain for IPL 2025
If Goenka can do that, it won’t be a shock that Pooran is named LSG’s captain for IPL 2025 over Pant. Earlier in the month, Goenka was asked about the captaincy of the team, and he gave a peculiar answer. “We have four leaders in our team—Rishabh (Pant), (Nicholas) Pooran, (Aiden) Markram, and Mitch Marsh. So it becomes a very strong leadership pool of intellect, thought, and strategy. They are all people who can go with the mindset to win,” he’d told Aakash Chopra.
From what the man himself said, don’t be shocked if one of Aiden Markram or Mitchell Marsh is handed the captaincy over Rishabh Pant and Nicholas Pooran.
